


Blood Heat

by DonSample



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Castle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 09:24:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4954993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DonSample/pseuds/DonSample
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A headless corpse is found in Central Park. Nikki Heat investigates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Preface:
> 
> There have been multiple Buffy/Castle crossovers, and in many of them Alexis has been called as a Slayer. How would Richard Castle deal with learning about the supernatural world with vampires and Slayers in it? He’d write a Nikki Heat story about them, of course. And then because he’s a writer of serious detective fiction, and not urban fantasy, he’d stick it in a drawer.
> 
> If you haven’t read any of the Nikki Heat books, all the characters in them are pretty thinly disguised versions of the characters from Castle, so when Slayers start showing up in this story, I keep up the same tradition.
> 
> Acknowledgements: Nikki Heat and associated characters are the creation of Richard Castle, who is himself fictional, and was created by Andrew W Marlowe, and is owned by ABC. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the creation of Joss Whedon. Some inspiration for this story came from tanstaafl’s [Checkmate](http://tthf.me/Xlhe).

The uniformed officers manning the barricades recognized Detective Nikki Heat’s gold Crown Victoria as an unmarked police car, and moved them aside to let her pass through to park with the other police cars, CSU vans, and the M.E. wagon clustered around the entrance to Central Park. 

She got out of her car, her hand unconsciously brushing over her hip to assure herself that her SIG Sauer service pistol was in its proper place. She let her leather jacket flap open as she strode toward the scene, showing the gold detective’s badge clipped to her belt to anyone who looked her way. 

It was a beautiful spring morning. The nighttime frost was disappearing from the areas that the sun reached through the breaks in the trees, but the shadows were still cloaked in white. Birds were singing; new growth was sprouting all around her. It had rained yesterday, but this morning had dawned bright, and clear. The day was new enough that the scent of fresh growth from vegetation in Central Park hadn’t yet been overpowered by the fumes from car exhausts. 

Nikki Heat paused twenty yards short of the yellow tape surrounding the crime scene, both to take in the environs of the homicide, and to pay a moment of homage to the victim … someone that she didn’t know anything about yet, but it was part of her ritual. Whoever lay dead on the other side of that yellow plastic ribbon was a human being. They were certainly someone’s child. They might have siblings, a spouse, and children; an ever expanding network of friends, acquaintances, and enemies. Their death might have come at the hand of any one of those — statistically speaking most people were killed by someone they knew — or it might have been a random act of violence perpetrated by a stranger. The vic — Nikki hated thinking of them that way, but she didn’t have a name yet — might just have been someone who was in the park at the wrong time. 

The yellow tape was blocking off public access to an area of the woods at the eastern side of Turtle Pond in Central Park. Joggers who liked to loop around the pond were being diverted onto a slightly longer path along West 79th, and East Drive. 

The officer guarding this side of the perimeter wasn’t anyone Heat had seen before, but he saw her gold shield and lifted the tape for her to pass under it. CSU had already been all over the scene, putting down their little, yellow, numbered markers by everything that they thought might be relevant to this case. She gave the markers a wide berth as she moved in toward the body, but she kept her eyes down at the ground, to make sure that she didn’t step on anything that CSU might have missed. 

Roach — as everyone called the team of Detectives Raley and Ochoa — were standing by the body. “What have we got?” asked Detective Heat, then she got her first good look at the victim. 

She was lying on the ground, sheltered from view by anyone on the jogging path by the shrubs and other undergrowth. She was dressed in a jacket, and a short, faux-leather skirt over fishnet stockings. There were a couple of obvious problems with the crime scene. Detective Heat addressed the most obvious one, first. “Where’s her head?” 

Lauren Parry, the Medical Examiner who was making a more detailed inspection of the body looked up. “I don’t know. I doubt if our vic was killed here. This looks more like a body drop, to me.” That conclusion was pretty obvious too, from the second problem with the crime scene: there wasn’t anywhere near enough blood to go with a headless corpse. 

“Can you give us a time of death?” 

“Not a very accurate one,” said Lauren. “With most of her blood gone, and the body having been moved, it complicates things, but I’d say sometime between midnight and two a.m.. I might be able to give you a more accurate time, once I’ve got her back to the lab.” 

“Do we have an ID on her yet?” 

“She still had her purse,” said Detective Ochoa. “The driver’s license in it IDed her as Margaret Winston. One of the uniforms recognized the name. He says she’s been picked up for prostitution a couple of times. She worked the clubs and bars along Central Park West. I’ve had them start a canvas, to see if anyone saw her last night.” 

“Who found her?” Heat knew that whoever reported a murder was a likely perpetrator. 

“A jogger, Ray Johnstone, and his dog,” said Raley, nodding his head toward a man on a nearby bench with a golden retriever sitting in front of him, and a uniformed officer standing watch over him. “He says that his dog pulled him off the path, and led him to the body. That’s his breakfast over there.” He pointed to puddle of vomit, a couple of yards from the body. 

“Any indication that he knew the victim?” asked Heat. 

“Not so far,” said Raley. 

Nikki took one more look around at the scene, and then went to talk to their witness: not because she doubted anything that Raley had told her, but because she wanted to make him repeat his story, to her. He might add a detail that he had left out earlier that could become significant, or he might slip and change his story if he was trying to cover something up. 

“Mr. Johnstone, I’m Detective Heat. I’m told that you found the body?” 

Johnstone nodded. “Yes, well, it was really my dog, Rawlf, who found her. We were jogging around the pond, and he swerved off into the bushes. I thought at first that he’d seen a squirrel, or something, but then I saw her.” 

“What did you do?” 

“Rawlf was sniffing around her, and I pulled him back. At first I thought that she might have been drunk, or a druggy that had passed out here, but then I saw that her head was gone. I’m afraid that I threw up.” 

“That’s not an uncommon reaction,” said Detective Heat, in her most sympathetic voice. 

“After I got done heaving up my breakfast, I called 911,” said Mr. Johnstone, “and then I pulled back to wait for the police.” 

“Did you touch the body at all?” 

“No!” said Johnstone, “and Rawlf didn’t either, really. He might have nudged her with his nose a couple of times before I pulled him away, but that’s all.” 

Nikki decided to switch the subject. “Do you run by here often?” 

“Once or twice a week, if the weather’s nice,” said Johnstone. “I don’t really have a fixed route. I like to mix things up, take different paths on different days.” 

Heat nodded, and gave his clothes a look. He was dressed like a high end jogger, but nothing he had on was new. It was all showing the wear patterns of regular use. Johnstone was quickly dropping down her suspect list. She would have Roach do more digging to see if there was any connection between him and their victim, but she doubted if they’d find anything. 

The trouble was that she had no suspects to put _above_ Johnstone on her list. Maybe someone from Vice could tell her who Margaret Winston’s pimp was — always a prime suspect when a prostitute was killed — or it might have been one of her Johns. Then there were the toughest sorts of cases to crack: when there was no connection between the victim, and her killer. 

“Thank you, Mr. Johnstone. We have all that we need from you, for now. Thank you for your cooperation.” Detective Heat led him, and Rawlf, back to the yellow ribbon, and lifted it for him and his dog to pass under. “We’ll contact you, if we need any more information.” 

While escorting Mr. Johnstone and his dog out of the cordoned off area around the crime scene, Detective Heat scanned the crowd that had assembled to gawk like vultures over a carcass in the desert. It was a cliché that killers returned to the scenes of their crimes, but clichés only became clichés because they were repeated. Most of the people outside the tape looked like the usual sort of curious onlookers that any crime scene attracted in New York City, including a camera crew from a local morning news show and a reporter that Nikki knew was hoping to move up to a national news slot with one of the cable networks. She ignored them trying to get her attention, to make a comment on the record, as she looked over the crowd. One pair of onlookers stood out to her. At first she thought that they were both teenage girls, a blonde and a red-head, but then the blonde looked her way, and their eyes locked for a moment. There was something about those eyes that didn’t belong to a teenager. 

Nikki blinked, and the feeling passed. The blonde was just a blonde teenager again. And coming down the path behind the blonde and her friend was the current bane of her existence. She couldn’t help noticing how Jameson Rook’s eyes flicked down across the blonde’s back, to check out her rear, before he passed her. He looked back over his shoulder at her, and her red-headed companion, as he came up to the tape. 

He gave her his smuggest smile, and handed a paper cup of Dean  & DeLuca coffee. “Detective Heat. What do we have this fine morning?” 

If Nikki’d had her druthers, she’d have sent Rook off to trade shop talk with the TV reporter, but he’d pulled strings with the Mayor and Commissioner so he could shadow her for a magazine story he had written about her. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that the article had been published months ago: he still showed up at her crime scenes, and the brass still told her that she had to let him in. 

Nikki lifted the tape for him. “Why don’t you tell me.” She might not like that he’d been granted full access to shadow her investigations, but the two time Pulitzer winning reporter did sometimes come up with an idea or two that was worth the bother. 

He had also learned a few things in the time he’d spent following her around. He started out by getting a general overview of the entire area, before moving in closer to where the body had been found. The ME was in the process of moving her to a body-bag, for transport to the morgue. 

He asked the same first question she had: “Where’s her head?” 

“We haven’t found it, yet.” 

He spun around, and had a good long look at the pond. It was covered by a thin film of ice. “It was pretty cold last night,” he said. “The ice _might_ have formed after someone chucked her head in there.” 

“That’s something that we’re going to have to check,” agreed Detective Heat. “Along with dragging the pond to see if we can find the murder weapon.” She wouldn’t be surprised if they found several knives, and maybe a gun or two. The pond was a convenient place to dispose of a lot of things. 

Rook was looking back at where the body had been. “No blood, so we’re probably looking at a body drop. Have you turned up any witnesses who saw someone being carried into the park?” 

“Not yet,” said Nikki. 

“Even in New York, someone carrying a headless body is bound to attract attention. Maybe he had her wrapped in something, like a rug, or inside something he could wheel in, like one of those big trash cans.” 

“No wheel or drag marks near the body.” 

“So he didn’t wheel her right up to the drop spot. Do you have a time, yet?” 

“Midnight to 2 a.m.” 

“Okay, not many people around then. He could wheel her along the path in something that no one would look twice at. Stop and look around to make sure no one’s nearby, take out the body, carry it over and drop it, and be back to take his transport away in under a minute, easy.” 

“A scenarios go, it works,” said Detective Heat. “The only problem is that we have absolutely no evidence to back it up.” 

“Finding the evidence is your job,” said Jameson Rook. 

“That’s not the way it works,” said Detective Heat. “You don’t come up with a theory, and then look for the evidence that fits it. You get your evidence _first_ and then you develop a theory that fits your evidence.” She made a mental note to have CSU check for any sign that something with wheels had been stopped along the pathway near here last night though, as soon as she could talk to them without Rook overhearing. She didn’t have much hope that they’d find anything, even if that was how their perp had moved the body. The ground was frozen solid, and dozens of people had passed through the area before the body had been discovered. 


	2. Chapter 2

The homicide detective’s bull pen at the 20th precinct had six desks crowded into a space meant for four. There was barely space on the wall between two ranks of desks for Nikki Heat’s whiteboard: the whiteboard that was currently blank, as it was at the beginning of every investigation. She stuck a blown up copy of Margaret Winston’s driver’s licence photo in the top left corner and wrote her name under it. 

Along the bottom of the board Heat drew a timeline for last evening, starting at six p.m., and ending at seven a.m. She put a squiggly line over the two hours from midnight to two a.m., and marked it TOD. She hoped that she’d be hearing from Lauren soon, to narrow that down somewhat. The end of the line was marked with “Johnstone finds body.” 

Detective Ochoa stuck up a mug shot of an Hispanic man beside Margaret’s picture. “Her pimp, Miguel Chavez. Unfortunately, he’s got an air tight alibi. He’s awaiting trial in Rikers, for unrelated charges. He and another pimp got in fight over whose girls should be working which corners.” 

“The canvas of bars and clubs Winston frequented hasn’t turned up anything,” said Raley. “A few bartenders recognized her, but they all said she hasn’t been in for a couple of weeks. Looks like she found someplace new to ply her trade. Maybe she was in someone else’s territory.” 

“Could this be someone trying to send Chavez a message?” asked Rook. “Stay off my turf, or lose your source of income?” 

“Maybe, but the guy he had the fight with has a pretty good alibi too,” said Ochoa. “He’s still in the hospital.” 

Detective Raley put up a picture of their jogger. “Mr. Johnstone checks out too. He was at home with his wife, kids, and dog, all last night.” 

“So we don’t have much of anything to go on.” Heat picked up the preliminary report from CSU, and quickly read through it. Based on the little bit of blood spatter at the scene, and other marks on the ground they had determined that Winston had been decapitated at the scene. 

Rook had been reading over her shoulder. “Why would someone carry a body into Central Park, decapitate it there, and then leave, taking the head with them? That doesn’t make any kinda sense.” 

“People who cut the heads off of corpses are already several kinds of crazy,” said Ochoa. “There’s no accounting for anything else that they may do.” 

The phone on Nikki’s desk rang, and she picked it up. “Detective Heat.” 

“Nik, it’s Lauren. If you’d like to come down, I’ve got a couple of things I’d like to show you about our victim.” 

“I’ll be right there,” said Nikki, and she hung up her phone. “Dr. Parry has something for us.” 

“We’ll run down anyone else Chavez might have a beef with,” said Raley. 

“Which leaves me to accompany you to see our lovely Medical Examiner,” said Jameson Rook. 

“If you must,” said Detective Heat. 

The Medical Examiner’s office was in the basement of the precinct house, where it tended to stay cool even when the hottest days of the summer strained the building’s air conditioning. Margaret Winston’s headless body was laid out on an examining table. 

Lauren skipped right over any preliminary chit-chat. “I managed to pin down the time of death a bit more precisely. I can now say with reasonable confidence that she died at about 1:30 a.m. plus or minus half an hour.” 

“That’s good,” said Detective Heat, thinking that her squiggly TOD line just got cut in half. 

“I can also tell you that she had unprotected sex, about two hours before she died.” 

“Consensual?” 

“No signs of recent bruising, or defensive wounds, but she’s got some marks that might be a week old.” Dr. Parry pointed to some yellowing bruises on Margaret Winston’s wrists, and ankles. “Looks like someone used some sort of restraints on her. Not ropes. It looks more like some sort of straps were used.” 

“So, maybe she was into unsafe sex, in more ways than one,” said Rook. 

Heat ignored him. “Will we get DNA for whoever she had sex with?” 

“I’ve sent samples off to the lab, so we should be getting something back from them eventually, but they’ve got a two week backlog.” 

“Anything else?” asked Heat. 

“She has a cut, on her inner left thigh.” Lauren pointed to a thin red line there. “It’s about a week old, too, and had been sealed closed with medical glue, and bandaged.” 

“Any idea what caused it?” 

“A small, very sharp, blade,” said Dr. Parry. “Possibly a scalpel. The initial cut would have bled a _lot_. The cut hit a vein.” 

“Suicide attempt?” asked Rook. 

“I doubt it,” said Parry. “If you’re going to kill yourself by opening a vein, there are much better places to do it. To deliberately hit a vein, cutting there, would take some knowledge of anatomy. The vein that was cut wouldn’t bleed enough to kill her, even if left untreated.” 

“What can you tell me about how her head was removed?” asked Detective Heat. 

“It was done post mortem, by someone who is very strong, and using a knife with at least a twelve inch blade.” 

“So, even Mick Dundee would think it was a real knife, then,” said Rook, which earned him a pair of annoyed glares. 

Dr. Parry pointed to the severed neck. “It was done with two cuts.” She picked up a plastic ruler, to stand in for the knife. “They first started with a stab in from her left side, that drove the blade all the way through her neck, passing between her spine, and her esophagus.” She demonstrated with the ruler, stabbing it through the air an inch away from the stump of Margaret’s neck. “Then they pulled up, with enough force that her body was lifted clear of the ground, until the knife cut through the front two thirds of her neck.” Again, she demonstrated with the ruler. 

“She would have fallen back to the ground,with her head folded back, and leaving the first wound gaping open. The second cut started from her right side, and they used a sawing action with their knife, to cut through the muscles, and tendons, and between her vertebrae.” This action too was demonstrated with the ruler. 

“How long was she dead, before that?” asked Heat. 

“The head was removed within minutes of her death. Lividity patterns don’t show any indication that the body had lain anywhere else, for any length of time,” said Dr Parry. “Probable cause of death is loss of blood, but most of the wound that caused it is in the missing part. She was already pretty much drained of blood before her head was removed.” 

“Maybe there was something distinctive about the weapon they used to kill her, and they took the head to conceal it. A head is much easier to dispose of than an entire body,” said Rook. “Wrap it up in something, and you could dump it in any one of thousands of trash cans or dumpsters around the city. It might already be buried in a landfill somewhere.” 

Detective Heat ignored him. “You said ‘most of the wound’.” 

“There is one other interesting thing about our victim.” Dr. Parry pointed to Margaret Winston’s neck. “If you look here, just below the cut, you can see that _something_ broke her skin, _before_ she died. There are four shallow puncture wounds, following an arc. She traced them out with her finger, and continued around, tracing out a circle about two inches in diameter over the missing portion of her neck. 

“Could it be a bite mark?” asked Detective Heat. 

“Maybe, but I don’t know from what, but it definitely wasn’t human,” said Dr. Parry. “The punctures came from something sharper than human teeth.” 

“It could have been a vampire!” said Rook. “That would account for the missing blood, and he took the head, with the bite mark, so we won’t be able to match up tooth impressions!” 

“Get real, Rook,” said Detective Heat. “It was more likely a dog, or some other animal.” 

“Rawlf the dog?” asked Rook. “Please tell me no. He was my favourite Muppet.” 

“I’d need some tooth impressions to be sure, but they don’t look like any dog bite I’ve seen, either.” said Dr. Parry. 

“Was there anything else?” asked Heat. “Did the tox-screen show anything?” 

“No signs of recent illegal drug use. No signs of any IV drug use at all. Her blood alcohol level was .06, so she wasn’t exactly sober, but she wasn’t falling down drunk, either.” 

They returned to the bull pen, and Detective Heat put Detective Raley onto getting the bite impression from Rawlf. “Tell Johnstone that there are some bite marks on the body, probably from a racoon, or something like that. We just need Rawlf’s impression so we can eliminate him. We really don’t think they came from him.” The second part of that had the advantage of being true. 

She went to the whiteboard, and wrote “Why take the head?” under Margaret Winston’s name, followed by “? to remove evidence ?” 

“Oh! He might have wanted a trophy, too!” said Rook. 

She frowned at him, but added “? trophy ?” to the board. 

Something had been bothering Nikki since Lauren had first shown them how Margaret’s head had been removed. “Ochoa? Wasn’t there a headless body found in Queens a few months ago? I want you to follow up with them, see if that decapitation matches what happened to our victim. If it does, get copies of all their reports, see if our victims had anything in common.” 

Ochoa reached for his phone. “On it!” 

“Now that you mention it, I remember something from when I stopped in Rome a few years ago, on my way back from Chechnya,” said Rook. “The Italian press was going on about a couple of headless bodies they’d found. Even took the headlines away from their Prime Minister’s bunga-bunga parties for a couple of days.” 

Nikki looked at Ochoa. 

“After I talk to Queens, I’ll call INTERPOL,” he said. 

Nikki added another squiggly line to her timeline, centred two hours before the TOD line, and labelled it “sex with ?” She pointed Rook toward the file that they’d gotten from Vice, about Margaret’s earlier prostitution busts. “Have a look in there, see if Margaret had a regular hotel she took her Johns to.” 

* * *

The hotel was one of the less seedy ones that rented rooms by the hour. The night manager wore a cheap suit, looked like he _had_ showered in the past week, and smiled at Heat and Rook as they approached his caged desk. “So, do you want a room for an hour, or all night?” 

Heat didn’t smile back as she flashed tin at him. “Neither. We’d like some information about one of your regular customers.” She showed him Margaret Winston’s photo. 

He barely glanced at it. “Sorry, don’t recognize her.” 

“Really? That’s strange, considering she’s been busted here, twice,” said Heat. “Take another look.” 

“Look, Detective, we pride ourselves on our discretion. It’s how we keep our regular customers, regular, if you know what I mean. So unless you’ve got a warrant…” 

“How many of your regulars would you keep if we parked a black-and-white out front, with officers taking pictures of everyone going in and out?” 

“Geez, what did Peggy do, to warrant this kinda attention?” 

“She got dead,” said Rook. 

Heat shot him an annoyed look. You never wanted to give anything away to your witnesses that you didn’t have to. 

“Ah, man, who’d wanna kill Peggy? She was a nice kid,” said the manager. 

“So, maybe now you’ll tell us about the last time you saw her,” said Detective Heat, “since we’ve already established that you lied to us about knowing her.” 

“Yeah, she was a regular,” said the manager. “Even had her own room, that I tried to keep open for her, if we weren’t too full.” 

“And how did she pay for this unusual largess on your part?” asked Rook. 

“We had an arrangement. She’d pay me under the table, in trade, if you know what I mean.” 

“Did she make a payment last night?” asked Heat. 

“Nyah, last night was Tuesday.” 

“What’s Tuesday got to do with it?” asked Rook. 

“She’s got a regular customer; she always comes in with him on Tuesdays. They’re usually here about about eight, leave around midnight. She doesn’t often come back again after that.” 

“And was last night usual?” asked Heat. 

“Yeah, pretty much. They might have left a bit earlier than usual, maybe 11:30.” 

“Was he looking like a happy customer when he left?” asked Rook. 

“As happy as he ever does,” said the manager. 

“Can you describe him?” 

“He’s an odd little duck. Looks like an accountant who’s afraid he’s going to get audited by the IRS, most of the time. Kinda short, maybe five-five, forty to forty-five, balding, with a comb-over. He’s usually wearing a cheap suit.” 

“Hair, or eye colour?” asked Heat. 

“Dark hair, going grey,” said the manager. “Can’t say as I ever noticed what colour his eyes are. He wears glasses, though: round ones, like Harry Potter.” 

“Race?” 

“White guy.” 

“Did you ever hear a name?” 

“I can get it for you.” The manager turned away, to the computer terminal on his desk. After a few mouse clicks, and a bit of typing, the printer beside it began to whir, and spat out a sheet of paper. He handed it to Detective Heat. 

She looked at it in surprise. It was a copy of the bill for a room from last night. 

Rook looked over her shoulder. “He paid by credit card?” 

“Yeah, like I said: an odd duck.” 

* * *

Nikki Heat rapped firmly on the apartment door. Jameson Rook looked back and forth, up and down the hallway. The building was well maintained: the carpet was old, and worn, but it was clean and had been vacuumed recently; the walls had been painted within the last couple of years; all the lights worked. 

The muffled sound of a television coming from inside the apartment stopped, and a few seconds later someone asked “Who is it?” through the door. 

Heat held up her badge by the peephole. “Police, Mr. Mallory. We’d like to talk to you.” 

She heard multiple deadbolts being unlocked, and then the door opened a crack, with the safety chain still in place. “Can I see that badge again?” asked the man in the apartment. 

Heat held it up where he could see it. After a couple of seconds the door closed and she heard the chain being released. The door opened again. 

Stuart Mallory looked just as the hotel manager had described him. His picture should have been in the dictionary beside the entry for nebbish. “What can I do for you?” he asked. 

“Can we come in, Mr. Mallory?” asked Heat. 

He looked back and forth between her, and Rook, and then said “I suppose so.” He stepped back from the door. 

Heat and Rook entered the small bachelor apartment. It consisted of just two rooms. The main room was a combined bed, living, dining room with an attached kitchenette. An open doorway showed where the bathroom was. Another door looked like it might belong to a closet. 

Most of the available wall space was taken up by book shelves, except for a rectangular area in which a flat screen TV sat, showing a paused scene from a show Nikki didn’t recognize. 

The kitchenette was separated from the main room by a breakfast bar at which there were two stools. The counter was clear in front of one of them. The counter in front of the other stool had a collection of plastic boxes on it, each one with a label. There was a box for electric bills, another box for phone bills, a couple of boxes for different credit cards, and boxes for bank statements: all very neat and tidy. 

There was a sofa facing the television that also looked like it was only ever used by one person. It had a pronounced sag in the spot that was best placed for television watching. The foot of a single bed was visible around the end of a screen. Every indication said that only one person lived here, and that he rarely, if ever, had visitors. 

“Mr. Mallory, we’re here to talk to you about your relationship with Margaret Winston,” said Detective Heat. 

“Peggy?” He glanced furtively around. Rook had started perusing the titles on his book shelves. “What about her?” 

“Tell us about her,” said Detective Heat. 

“What’s to tell? We meet once a week. We go to dinner, then to a hotel. We talk, she’s a good listener, and we…do things.” 

Rook looked back from his position by the books. “What sort of things?” 

“She’s a prostitute. We do the sorts of things that she accepts payment for.” 

“For four hours?” asked Heat. 

“I like to be able to pretend that there is more to our relationship than just sex. I like to take my time, talk, share some wine, progress slowly through levels of increasing physical intimacy.” 

“Was there anything unusual about last night?” 

“Not particularly. Peggy did seem a little distracted, maybe. She kinda rushed us through the denouement, if you will. We finished a little earlier than usual.” 

“Did she give you any reason for that?” asked Heat. 

“No. She just seemed a bit distracted, is all.” 

“Did you notice anything unusual about her that night?” 

“Not really… Oh, she had a bandage on her thigh. I asked what happened, and she just said she’d cut it on something. She didn’t want to talk about it.” 

“Anything else?” 

“Not that comes to mind.” 

“You didn’t notice any bruising?” 

“On her wrists and ankles,” said Mallory, “but there was nothing unusual about that. I’ve seen bruises there before. She told me that she charged extra for those sorts of games, so I never tried them with her. I’m not into that kind of thing.” 

“Can you account for your whereabouts, following 11:30 last night?” asked Heat. 

“We took a taxi from the hotel,” said Mallory. “It dropped her off somewhere in the East Village, then it brought me home, where I stayed until it was time to go to work this morning.” 

“You shared a cab?” asked Rook. “Was that usual?” 

“No, but Peggy knows which neighbourhood I live in. She asked if I could give her a lift, last night.” 

“Has she ever been here, in your apartment?” asked Heat. 

“No. Never. I would never allow that. She doesn’t even know which building I live in. What’s this about Detective? Has Peggy done something? Has something happened to her?” 

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to find someone else to spend your Tuesday evenings with, Mr. Mallory,” said Detective Heat. “Margaret Winston is dead.” 

He staggered back, and dropped down into his spot on the sofa. “Dead? How? When?” 

“Some time after you dropped her off, and we’re still investigating how it happened,” said Heat. “Do you remember the name of the cab company?” 

Mallory rubbed his face. “Oh, ah, no … it was just a cab … just a moment.” He got up from the sofa, and went to a cardboard box on his bookshelf. He rummaged through it for second. “Yes, here it is.” He handed Detective Heat a receipt from the Sunshine Cab Company. 


	3. Chapter 3

They were back in the bull pen early the next morning. Nikki Heat added a solid line from eight o’clock to 11:30, labeled “with Stuart Mallory.” He had his own column added to the board. Rook had added “Obsessive-compulsive” to the description of him. 

“What makes you say that?” asked Heat. 

“His bookshelves,” said Rook. “They were organized like a mini library, with books sorted by category: mysteries on one shelf, fantasy on another, SF on a third, and that was just his fiction. He had his non-fiction sorted by its Dewey Decimal classification. And then there was the way he had all his mail sorted, and the box he had all his receipts in. Is he a suspect?” 

“At this point, _everyone_ is a suspect, but Mallory isn’t a very good one. I don’t think he knew she was dead, until I told him. He kept referring to her in the present tense. Of course, he could be a better actor than I think he is.” 

Raley hung up his phone. “Cabbie confirms that he picked up Mallory and Winston just after 11:30, and dropped her off at the Tepes Club in the East Village, just after midnight. Then dropped Mallory at his apartment building fifteen minutes later.” 

Nikki added that to her timeline. “What do we know about the Tepes Club?” 

“It’s a new, Goth themed, club. It just opened a couple of weeks ago, about the time that Winston stopped hanging out in her old haunts.” 

“Named for Vlad Tepes, more commonly known as Vlad the Impaler, or Dracula,” added Rook. “Just the sort of place a vampire would hang out.” 

“There’s no such thing as vampires, Rook,” said Heat. 

The rest of the day was taken up by routine police work — so Rook vanished part way through it, to go off and do whatever he did when he wasn’t following Nikki around. Roach ran down Mallory’s background: it was spotlessly clean. His financial statements showed that he was living well within his means, and the only expenses that were even a little dubious were his weekly withdrawals of $400 every Tuesday afternoon, that no doubt had gone to Margaret Winston. His employer reported that he’d arrived at work at his usual time on Wednesday morning, and that he hadn’t noticed anything unusual in his behaviour that day. 

The report from INTERPOL about the murders that had taken place in Rome arrived. The method of decapitation matched what had happened to Margaret Winston, and there weren’t just the two cases from Rome. There had been a dozen cases like it, spread around Europe. Two or three prostitutes’ bodies would be found in a particular city or country, without heads or blood, spaced a month or two apart. Then nothing would happen for the next four to six months before it happened again, in a different country. No connection between the murders had been noticed the first couple of times it happened. The authorities in Rome hadn’t been aware, at first, that they were dealing with a killer who had done the same thing in Germany, and France. It was only the international publicity that came when a sixteen year old French exchange student became the second victim in Rome that made European authorities realize that they were dealing with a serial killer who kept jumping between jurisdictions in order to avoid notice. 

The international angle, and the fact that they were dealing with a serial killer put Nikki Heat on a deadline. If she didn’t solve this case soon, the Feebs would be showing up to take it away from her. 

There was some good news in the package from INTERPOL. Someone in London had seen the last victim there with a man, just half an hour before her death. They had given Scotland Yard a good description, and they now had a police composite drawing of a suspect. Their description said that he was white, about thirty years old, six feet tall, with a muscular physique. The drawing showed a man with wavy dark hair, a moustache, and a couple days’ stubble on his chin. 

* * *

The Tepes Club was only a couple of blocks south from Heat’s Gramercy Park apartment, so Rook had met her there, where she had gone to change into something that would look less conspicuous in the club than her work clothes. He had shown up wearing a black sport coat over a red button-down shirt, and black jeans. 

They arrived at the club a little after ten o’clock. There was a line of people — most of them dressed in goth clothes, with dark makeup — waiting to be admitted. Heat went straight to the head of the line, flashed her badge at the bouncer, and walked right past him, with Rook trailing behind her. 

The interior of the club was noisy, and crowded. The overall lighting was dim, and red, with a few brighter islands scattered around, mainly in places where the staff needed to be able to see what they were doing. The place was primarily decorated in black and red as well. Rook fit right in. Surprisingly for a club like this, there was a lack of anything in chrome or glass. 

Rook disappeared in the direction of the bar almost as soon as they were in the door. Heat spent the first few minutes just getting a feel for the place, watching the interplay between the people. There was a dynamic to crowds like this. People just naturally sorted themselves out into various hierarchies. A few minutes of watching would tell you who was important in a room, and who wasn’t. 

Rook reappeared a Heat’s elbow, carrying a couple of drinks. He held one out to her. 

She frowned at him. “I’m on duty.” 

“I know,” said Rook. “It’s a Virgin Mary. I thought we should at least _try_ to blend in a bit, while we scoped the place out.” 

Heat took the glass, and cautiously tasted it. She didn’t detect any trace of alcohol, but she still didn’t do more than take an occasional sip while she watched the room. 

Most of the tables in the club were occupied by unimportant patrons. Serving staff circulated amongst them, taking orders and bringing drinks, without showing much favouritism. A few got the extra attention of repeat customers, who had tipped well in the past. A couple of other tables getting a bit less attention probably belonged to repeat customers who hadn’t tipped well. 

There was a crowded dance floor on which many people were gyrating to the music. Some of the dancers were clearly couples, and others were solo. Sometimes one of the solo dancers would try to cut in on a couple, with varying levels of success. Watching over the club floor were half a dozen men, with very serious expressions on their faces. Put them in bland suits, and cut off most of their hair and they could pass for Secret Service agents, but these guys were dressed like they’d stepped out of a Laurell K. Hamilton novel, in poofy shirts, and leather pants. 

The centre of power in the room was a corner booth with a good view of the entire club floor. A man was seated there who was dressed in an outfit that could have come out of Rook’s closet. He was flanked by a couple of pretty girls in skimpy outfits. Neither of them looked old enough to be in the club. There were also a couple of the security men dancing attendance on him. Mostly they just stood and glared at anyone who dared approach the table without being invited. Sometimes he’d send one of them off to run an errand, usually approaching patrons in the club, and inviting them to come join him at his table for a time. Invitations went to the young and good looking, or older people who looked like they had money. He didn’t seem to have a preference for what sex they were. 

There was a stairway by the table, leading up to a balcony overlooking the dance floor. It had a velvet wrapped chain across the foot of it, and another bouncer standing guard. Sometimes the people who had been invited to the table were allowed to go upstairs. 

Once she had developed a good feel for the dynamics of the club Heat started to ask around about Peggy Winston, starting with the bartenders, and servers. Several people said that they recognized her as a regular at the club since it had opened. A couple of them even remembered seeing her on Tuesday night, but they denied having seen if she had left with anyone. More than one person had cast a nervous look at the man in the corner before answering. No one admitted recognizing the man in the sketch from Scotland Yard. 

Heat decided that it was time to talk to the man in the corner. She approached his booth, with Rook following a half step behind. Only one of the attendants was at the table, the other having been sent away on some errand a minute earlier. He stepped out to block her path. “Mr. Alucard has not invited you into his presence.” 

“Alucard? Really?” asked Rook. “He couldn’t come up with something better than ‘Dracula’ spelled backwards? That is so lame.” 

The attendant actually growled at Rook, and it must have been a trick of the light, but for a moment Heat thought she saw his eyes change colour. She held up her badge. “Mr. Alucard will talk to me.” 

Alucard raised his hand, and made a brushing away gesture. “Stand aside, Ramone. I will speak with the Detective.” He spoke with a cheesy fake eastern European accent. 

Ramone stepped back, but he continued to glare at Rook with an expression that said that Rook wouldn’t want to encounter him alone, in a dark alley. Nikki stepped up to the table. 

“So, Detective, how may I be of service to you?” asked Alucard. 

“You can start by telling me who you are.” 

His accent slipped into a much more convincing French. “Jean Dupuis, but while I am in my club, I am Mr. Alucard. It is, as your associate pointed out, a rather lame pseudonym, but it is the sort of thing that my clientele expects.” 

“This is your club?” asked Heat. Their previous research into the place had only turned up a network of numbered corporations, and Cayman Island bank accounts, that they hadn’t yet been able to trace back to any individual names. 

The Alucard accent came back. “I have some silent partners, who provided financing, but I run it.” 

Heat produced her picture of Margaret Winston. “Do you recognize her?” 

“Peggy, yes, she was a frequent patron. I was saddened to hear of her passing.” Nikki didn’t detect even a hint of unhappiness in his voice. “She was quite adept at getting other people to spend money.” That sounded sincere. 

“Did she ever get invited to your table?” asked Heat. 

“A time, or two,” said Alucard. “I was considering…offering her a career change.” 

“You were going to ‘save’ her?” asked Rook, making air quotes around “save.” 

“Oh my, no,” said Alucard. “I have no objection to her chosen profession. I just felt her talents could be better utilized.” 

“On your second floor?” asked Heat. 

Alucard shrugged a reply that was neither a “yes” nor a “no.” 

“What’s up there?” asked Rook. 

“A private, members only, section of the club,” said Alucard. 

“May we see it?” asked Heat. 

“Certainly, right after you show me your warrant.” 

“Perhaps I should arrange for a visit from the licensing authority.” Heat looked at the two girls with Alucard. Up close they both looked to be sixteen or so. “Make sure there isn’t any underage drinking going on here.” 

“Cindy, Deborah, show the nice Detective your IDs.” 

Both girls had small clutch purses that they opened, and produced New York state driver’s licences from. They handed them to Detective Heat. They showed that Cindy was twenty-four, and Deborah was twenty-two. They also looked real to Detective Heat. The lighting in the club wasn’t the best, but if these IDs were fakes, they were very good ones. 

The other attendent returned, carrying a DVD in a jewel case. He handed it to Alucard. Alucard passed it on to Heat. “Here is a copy of our security video from midnight to two a.m. on Tuesday night. I hope you find it useful.” 

Heat was surprised that it had been produced without her even asking for it. “We’re going to want more than this.” 

“You can have it, when you come back with a warrant. That video covers all of Peggy’s last visit to my club. I see no reason for you to have any more.” He produced a business card from his jacket pocket. “Here is my attorney’s card. If you wish to talk to me some more, you can arrange an appointment through him. In the meantime, enjoy your time here. Your drinks are on the house.” He waved them away. 

They didn’t leave the club. Nikki Heat wanted to look around some more, observe the patrons, maybe they’d get lucky, and the man from the Scotland Yard picture would show up. She didn’t accept any of the free drinks that Alucard had offered. She made sure that everything was paid for. She also didn’t drink anything that didn’t come out of a bottle or can that she opened herself. 

About half an hour after they’d left Alucard’s table, someone dressed like one of the club employees approached him, and gave him a quietly whispered message. A brief expression of fright crossed his face, and he quickly rose, and with his attendants he ascended the stairs to the private part of the club. Heat was still trying to figure out what had spooked Alucard, when Rook nudged her elbow, and pointed toward the main entrance. 

Two girls had just come into the club. It was the same pair of teenagers that Nikki had seen at her crime scene, a couple of days earlier. They walked in like they owned the place, their eyes scanning the crowd. Once again the blonde’s eyes meet Nikki’s, and this time her lips quirked in a quick smile of recognition, before she went on with her survey. She didn’t seem to be either surprised, or dismayed that Heat had seen and recognized her in turn. The blonde’s scan of the room had picked out each of the club’s security people. Her gaze fixed momentarily on the security man closest to them. He held his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender and backed nervously away from her. 

She just frowned and shook her head, as if she had more important things on her mind than dealing with him right now, and went straight to the bar. 

The people crowding at the bar seemed to unconsciously step aside to make room for her. She leaned over the bar to speak with the bartender, while her redheaded friend turned and leaned back against the bar with her elbows resting on top of it, keeping her eyes on the rest of the room. She saw Nikki and Rook approaching across the crowded dance floor, but she took no special notice of them. Her attention was mostly on the security staff, too. 

The blonde was showing something to the bartender, who shook his head, and pointed toward Detective Heat. 

Heat heard a tray of drinks being dropped, and shouts of anger. She looked around, and saw a young woman barging through the crowd toward the emergency exit at the back of the club, roughly shoving anyone in her way aside as she fled. Just as she disappeared into the back hallway Heat saw the blonde and the redhead darting through the crowd, after her. Where the fleeing girl had shoved her way past anyone who might have been blocking her, her chasers nimbly dodged around any and all obstructions. 

Heat and Rook attempted to follow through the chaos the three women left in their wake, but they didn’t have the reckless disregard for injuring any bystanders of the first girl, nor the agility of the other two. The alarm on the emergency door sounded before they cleared the mobbed dance floor. When they reached the door, a big, burly, security guard was just pulling it closed again. Heat flashed her badge at him when he tried to stop her, and barged through into the alley behind the club. She looked both ways, and couldn’t see anyone. She tried listening, but could only hear the sounds of the city that never slept, coming from both directions. 

Rook had stayed standing in the door, not letting the guard close it, though he had turned off the alarm. Heat turned around to go back into the club. “Why didn’t you stop them?” she asked the security guard. He looked like he probably weighed as much as all three girls, combined. 

“Stop a Slayer when she’s chasing someone?” asked the guard. “Do I _look_ like I want to be dusted?” 

“What’s a slayer?” asked Rook. 

The guard didn’t deign to answer the question, even when Heat repeated it. He just shook his head at them while he pulled the door closed again, and re-armed the alarm on it. 

Back inside the club, Heat went back to the bartender. “What was it that blonde girl showed you?” 

“The same picture of that guy you showed me,” said the bartender. “I told her that she should talk to you, since you’ve been flashing it around the club all night.” 

“What about the girl they chased out of here? Who was she?” 

“Tequila Sunrise — that’s what she drinks. Can’t really tell you anything else about her.” 

“Is she a regular?” 

The bartender glanced up toward the balcony. “She’s been in here a couple of other nights. She’s one of Mr. Alucard’s special guests.” 

Heat turned, and looked up to where he had glanced. There wasn’t anyone visible on the balcony, now. She thanked the bartender for his cooperation, and went to talk to the guard on the stairway. “Would you please inform Mr Alucard that I would like to speak with him, and his lawyer, at his earliest convenience.” 

“Mr. Alucard has left the building,” said the guard. 

“First Dracula, and now he thinks he’s Elvis?” asked Rook. 


	4. Chapter 4

Nikki Heat updated her whiteboard the next morning. She removed Chavez and Johnstone’s pictures. In the old Chavez column she put the Tepes Club and Alucard, and in the former Johnstone column she put the two girls from from the club and her crime scene. At the top of that column she put one of the pictures that were always taken of the crowd that assembled around any crime scene. In this particular photograph Rook was clearly visible behind the two girls, checking out the blonde’s butt. 

Beneath it she had written “? slayer ?” and “? dusted ?” She’d looked both terms up in Urban Dictionary to see if they were some sort of slang expressions she hadn’t encountered before, but it hadn’t yielded anything that looked like it might fit. A wider Google search of the terms just turned up some nonsense about vampires, and girls who hunted them. She decided she didn’t want to add more fuel to Rook’s crazy theory. She knew that he came up with that sort of theory just to wind her up, but there was no sense stoking it any more. 

The DVD that Alucard had given her contained video from half a dozen different cameras. One exterior camera covered the main entrance off the street in front of the club, and another covered emergency and service doors off the alley at the back. One of the interior cameras was focused on the bar, and the other three covered the bulk of the interior, showing the dance floor, and all the tables around it. None of the cameras showed the balcony or the stairs leading up to it, or Alucard’s table. 

All the video was from standard definition cameras that had pretty good low light performance, but with one quarter the standard frame rate, allowing for a total of twelve hours of video to fit onto one DVD. She put all six videos up on her computer screen, and started them playing together — watching as they fast forwarded through the two hours, in just thirty minutes — to give herself an overview of Margaret’s last visit to the Tepes Club. 

She saw the taxi drop Margaret in front of the club, just a couple of minutes after she started the videos playing. She saw her enter; go to the bar; circulate through the crowd, sometimes spending some time with one man, or another. She only paid for her first drink herself. All her other drinks were paid for by someone else. At about 12:45 she met a man: tall, well built, clean-shaven with short blond hair. He bought her a couple of drinks, and then they left the club together. Nikki checked the timestamp: 1:13 a.m. Margaret had probably been killed no more than forty-five minutes later. 

Heat went back over the videos in slow motion, tracing the man’s movements back from the time he first met Margaret. He had arrived at the club shortly after her, and spent his first half hour prowling around the outside of the main club floor, watching everyone. He reminded Heat of a leopard stalking a herd of zebras: looking for the one he would would separate from the throng, and kill. 

Heat went through all the video, looking for the best view of him, and then printed it out, and stuck it up on her whiteboard. She sat back and looked at it for a minute, looking back and forth between it, and the composite drawing from Scotland Yard. 

The London Metropolitan Police had used a standard computer program to make their composite. NYPD had the same program. Nikki started it running on her computer, and entered the numeric code that came along with the drawing. The same composite drawing appeared on her computer screen. She eliminated the layers with the moustache, beard stubble, and hair. She flipped quickly through the other hair style selections, finding the one that most closely matched the picture from the video. What she ended up with was a pretty good match. She printed out the new composite, stuck it up beside the British one, and put her picture from the video with them. She was pretty sure that they were all pictures of the same man. 

Rook still hadn’t made an appearance when Captain Montrose called Heat and Roach into his office for an update on how the case was progressing. Heat showed him the picture of Margaret Winston leaving the club with the unidentified man, and the two versions of the composite. 

“Do you want to release his picture to the media?” asked Captain Montrose. 

“Not yet,” said Heat. “This guy has a history of moving between jurisdictions. Telling the press we’re looking for him is most likely just going to spook him: make him change his appearance and move again. I think we should just go with a BOLO to law enforcement, train and bus stations, and the airports. Hopefully someone will spot him.” 

The Captain nodded. “Do it. Anything else?” 

“I talked to ‘Alucard’s’ lawyer. They’ll be here for a meeting this evening.” 

“You didn’t demand to see them sooner?” asked the Captain. 

“I tried, but the lawyer insisted that his client wouldn’t be available before six, as he ‘works nights.’ And the lawyer is with Marthar and Fowl.” 

“Damn,” said Roach. Every cop in the city hated Marthar and Fowl: the law firm of choice for the well-heeled scum of the earth. 

Captain Montrose grimaced. If you didn’t have all your ‘i’s dotted and ‘t’s crossed when dealing with a Marthar and Fowl client, you were liable to find your case evaporating, and yourself at the receiving end of a string of reprimands. “Alright, but don’t go too easy on him, just because of his lawyer.” 

“Yes, Sir,” said Heat. She knew the Captain would shield her as much as he could from any fallout from Marthar and Fowl. “Any word from the Feds?” She was a little surprised that no one had appeared yet to take over the investigation. 

“No,” said Montrose. “They’re being surprisingly quiet for a case involving an international serial killer. Well, let’s not look that gift horse in the mouth. Get back to work.” 

“Yes, Sir.” Heat and Roach left the office. 

Nikki Heat was not pleased by the sight that greeted her in the bull pen. Rook was there, and he wasn’t alone. The blonde was there too, and she was writing on Heat’s whiteboard. 

Rook saw Heat striding toward them and read the expression on her face. He raised his hands. “It wasn’t me! She was here before I was!” 

“Who are you? How’d you get in here? Why are you writing on my board?” 

She turned to Heat, and smiled. Heat was once again struck by the strange dichotomy of her appearance. At first glance, she could be a teenager, but she gave off an aura of maturity that only came from someone with a great deal of life experience. “Kimberly Spring; through the door; and I thought you’d like to know his real name.” She pointed at what she had written on the board. 

She had added “John Dwyer of Cleveland OH” to the column on the Tepes Club. 

“You know him?” 

“Only by reputation. He’s a blood sucking leech, but hardly the worst of his sort.” 

“Why are you here, Ms. Spring?” 

“Call me Kim.” She handed over a business card with her name, email address and phone number on it, from something called Guardian Security. The address was in one of Manhattan’s more expensive neighbourhoods, and that’s saying something. “And I’m here to introduce myself, so you don’t waste too much of your time investigating me, when you could be looking for that guy.” She pointed at Heat’s pictures of her prime suspect. 

“You’re some sort of P.I.?” 

Spring leaned back against the edge of Raley’s desk. “Not exactly. Guardian provides a lot of security related services to our clients. I’m more of a … trouble-shooter.” 

Heat looked her up and down. She didn’t look like she could handle much trouble. She was dressed in an expensive business suit, and despite wearing shoes with two inch heels, the top of her head didn’t rise much higher than Heat’s chin. “What’s your interest in this case?” 

“One of our clients runs an international student exchange program for especially gifted girls.” Kim pointed to one of the European newspaper stories posted on the board — the one about the French exchange student in Rome. “She was one of their students. Ever since then, we’ve had an interest in seeing to it that this guy gets caught.” 

“Why haven’t you come to us before now?” 

“And tell you what? Until I heard from one of our European friends that you’d asked for the INTERPOL file, we didn’t even know for sure if we were looking for the same guy, and once you got that, you got pretty much everything I know about him.” 

“There’s nothing about the Tepes Club in the INTERPOL file. What’s his connection to that?” 

“He likes Goth clubs. It’s where he finds most of his victims. That was my fifth of the night, when you saw me there. How’d you find it, by the way?” 

“Police work,” said Heat, not wanting to give away any specifics, though the trail that had led her to the Tepes was easily discernable from the information visible on her whiteboard. She didn’t want to draw Spring’s attention to anything there that she hadn’t already noticed. “You weren’t just in the Tepes by chance. They knew you there.” 

Spring glanced at what was written under her picture, and smiled. “I’m also in the pest control business, and, like I said, Dwyer is a blood sucking parasite, but he’s just a mosquito.” She nodded back at the board. “This guy’s a… You know? I can’t think of any animal that wouldn’t be insulted to be compared with him.” 

“In other words, a human being,” said Rook. 

“What about the girl you chased out of the club?” 

“Melody? We went to high school together. She has … issues. She saw me and just assumed that I was there looking for her. I have issues with people who run from me. I just naturally want to chase them. I caught up with her a couple of blocks away, and we had a nice little chat. Caught up on some old times, reminisced about some mutual friends, and then went our separate ways.” 

“Who’s your friend?” asked Rook, nodding back at the photograph from the park. 

“Alex? She’s my apprentice.” 

“Does this apprentice have a full name?” asked Heat. 

“Alexandra Bishop. Same address as me,” she added before Heat could ask. “I think that covers everything you need to know about us.” She got up and started toward the elevators. 

Heat followed behind her, with Rook tagging along behind. “Just a minute, Ms. Spring.” 

Spring didn’t stop. She looked back over her shoulder. “I told you, call me ‘Kim’, and I’ve got places to be. I just dropped by to introduce myself.” 

“We weren’t finished,” said Heat. 

“ _You_ might not be finished, but I am.” Spring pushed the button to call the elevator, and turned back to Heat. “Oh, Detective, be careful of Dwyer. He can be dangerous.” The elevator doors opened, and she stepped inside. 

“I thought you said he was just a parasite,” said Heat. 

Spring pressed the button for the ground floor. “Oh, he is, but do you know what the deadliest animal on the planet is?” 

The elevator doors closed on her smile before Heat could give any sort of response. She gave Rook a questioning look. 

“The mosquito,” said Rook. “Kills far more people every year than anything else.” 

Back in the bull pen, Heat assigned Detective Raley — their self styled ‘video czar’ — to making a more detailed examination of video from the club, to see if he could pull any clues from it. 

* * *

Heat’s research on John Dwyer hadn’t turned up any history of arrests. He had run a series of clubs in the Cleveland area over a period between 1995, and 2000, and then had dropped out of sight for a few years before surfacing again as “Jean Dupuis.” Most of his clubs in Cleveland had been run by the same sort of networks of corporations as the Tepes Club, and had gone bankrupt after operating for a year or two. Heat suspected that if she put some forensic accountants onto their books, she’d find that the reason they’d gone bankrupt was that Dwyer was siphoning off money into his own pockets. She considered forwarding the information on him to bunko, for them to have a closer look, but she dismissed the idea. She doubted if his business model had anything to do with her case, and if he was using Marthar and Fowl as his lawyers, everything was probably technically legal, anyway. 

He arrived at the precinct at a little after seven o’clock, accompanied by his lawyer. The lawyer was a smarmy little man who introduced himself as Lucas Munro. He reminded Heat of a Martin Short character from an old SNL skit: a lawyer who denied everything, including what he had just said ten seconds earlier. 

She accompanied Dwyer and his lawyer into one of their nicer interrogation rooms: one used to interview victims, not suspects. It had comfortable chairs, and though it did have an observation window, it was semi-concealed behind some half closed venetian blinds. 

She wasn’t planning on letting Dwyer know that she knew his real name at the top of the interview. “Mr. Dupuis, Mr. Munro, thank you for coming.” 

“I’m always happy to assist the police, Detective Heat,” said Dwyer, still using his Dupuis accent. “And before you ask, I have some more of our surveillance video for you, covering the … altercation that you witnessed last night.” He nodded to his lawyer. 

Mr. Munro opened his briefcase, and removed a DVD from it. “I would like to remind you that my client is under no obligation to supply you with this video, and it is being handed over now as an example of his willingness to cooperate with your investigation.” 

“Can you tell me anything about the three women?” asked Heat. “The one who ran, or the two who chased her?” 

“No, not really,” said Dwyer. 

“Your bartender told me that one of them was one of your ‘special guests’.” 

The lawyer leaned over and whispered something into Dwyer’s ear. 

Dwyer nodded, and he whispered some more. Eventually the lawyer leaned back. “My guests value their anonymity, even from me,” said Dwyer. “The young lady is most attractive, that is her primary qualification for admittance. She uses the name ‘Rhapsody,’ but I am certain that is a pseudonym. I don’t know much of anything else about her.” 

“What about the other two?” asked Heat. “You made a rather abrupt exit, just as they arrived.” 

“Just a coincidence, I assure you,” said Dwyer. “I was so engaged in observing you, that I forgot about an appointment. I was nearly late for it.” 

“Uh-huh,” said Heat, not believing a word of it. Instead of continuing with that line of questioning, which she didn’t expect to go anywhere, she placed a picture of their suspect that was clearly taken in his club on the table in front of Dwyer. “Do you know this man?” 

Dwyer made a show of looking carefully at the picture, before he shook his head, an slid the picture back across the table to her. “No, can’t say that I do. My club has had thousands of patrons, since it opened. You can’t expect me to recognize every one of them.” 

Heat placed a second picture — this time showing a profile of their suspect with Margaret Winston — on the table. “Are you sure about that? Maybe you saw him from a different angle.” 

Once again, Dwyer made a show of carefully considering the picture. “Still ‘no’ Detective. Is there anything else? I would like to get back to my club, before it gets too busy.” 

Heat stood up. “No, Mr. Dwyer, that will be all, for now. Thank you for coming in.” 

Dwyer didn’t seem to be the least bit surprised that Heat knew his real name. “Thank _you_ , Detective.” He had dropped the French accent for a generic north-eastern American accent. Heat wondered if this one was put on as well. “This has been one of my more enjoyable police interviews.” 

Heat escorted Dwyer and his lawyer back to the elevators, and said goodbye to them there. After the doors closed, she wondered if she had time to go to the locker room, for a quick shower. Something about Dwyer and his lawyer left her feeling even more unclean than dealing with suspects and their shysters usually did. 

She didn’t have time, so instead she went to give Raley the DVD of last night’s activity at the club. 

Rales was sitting at his computer, with surveillance video from ATMs on his screen. “What are you looking for?” she asked. 

“I noticed from the club video that our suspect had a pretty big wad of cash on him, that he used to pay for his drinks. I thought maybe he might have gotten it from an ATM close to the club before going in.” 

Heat knew that that was a long shot, but it was often the long shots that closed cases. It didn’t need a detective with Raley’s talents to do the job, though. “Pass that off to someone else. I’ve got some more video from the club for you. It covers the time that Rook and I were there last night, and should include Spring and her friends. I want to see what ‘Melody’ or ‘Rhapsody’ or whatever her name is looks like. I’d also like to know how they got out of that alley so fast.” 

Raley was at Heat’s desk ten minutes later. “You’re not going to believe this.” 

“Believe what?” 

Raley leaned over her shoulder, to reach her computer mouse. “I put a clip up on the server.” He clicked a few times, and brought up a video clip showing the rear door and alley behind the Tepes Club. Rook shifted his chair around so he could see the screen as well. 

The door opened so fast that it was closed in one frame, and a blur in the next, with the blurred image of a woman coming out of it. Over the next couple of seconds two more blurred women came running out the door, chasing after the first one. They became smears across the image as they accelerated down the alley, and around the corner at the end of it. A few seconds later Heat came out the door. She was moving fast enough that she was a little blurred too, until she stopped to look both ways, but not nearly as much as the women had been. 

“Now, the lighting is pretty dim in that alley, so the camera’s using a long exposure time, but those girls had to be running insanely fast to get that much motion blur,” said Raley. “I’d need to go down there with a tape measure to be sure, but by my rough estimate, they were doing over twenty miles an hour by the time they left camera range.” 

“That’s Usain Bolt kinda speed,” said Rook. “Why aren’t these girls on the Olympic track team?” 


	5. Chapter 5

“Peterson got something!” 

“Who’s Peterson?” asked Rook. 

“Uniform officer doing desk duty because of a broken leg,” said Raley. “I put him on looking at all the ATM video from around the Tepes Club, looking for our guy. He got a hit at an ATM about two blocks away, half an hour before he entered the club. Our suspect now has a name.” He wrote “David Burke” on the whiteboard, under the photos. 

“Did you get an address?” asked Heat. 

“Would you believe Sunnydale, California?” asked Raley. 

“No, I would not,” said Detective Heat. Ever since the town of Sunnydale had been completely destroyed in an earthquake a few years previously, it had become a favourite place for people with fake IDs to be from. “Do we have a local address?” 

“He’s using the same credit card that he used in the ATM to pay for a hotel room.” 

* * *

Heat pulled her Crown Victoria to a stop in front of the hotel. The Roach Coach pulled in behind her. “You!” She pointed her finger at Rook. “Stay in the car!” 

“Yes, ma’am!” said Rook, which earned him a glare from Heat. 

“I mean it!” said Heat. “This is a very dangerous man, I don’t want to be worrying about you getting in the way!” 

“I signed that liability waver!” said Rook. Heat glared at him. “Okay! I’ll stay in the car!” 

Heat didn’t believe him. He always said that he’d stay in the car, but he almost never did. She considered handcuffing him, but after the first time she’d done that he’d started carrying hidden keys. She settled for giving him a final glare before she checked her gun, and got out of the car to join Ochoa and Raley. All three of them checked the straps on their bullet proof vests, pulling them snug. 

David Burke was staying in a room on the fourth floor. The hotel was relatively new construction, without external fire escapes, or windows that opened, so it was pointless putting someone outside the building to stop him escaping that way. The manager had given them a housekeeping key-card so they could unlock the door for themselves. 

Heat stood to one side of the door, and Roach stood on the other. They all had their guns drawn. She used the card to unlock the door, before she banged on it. “David Burke! Police! Open up!” 

There was a scramble of motion inside the room, and Heat heard the window breaking. She grasped the handle, turned it, and gave the door a push so that it swung open, but she didn’t move into the doorway immediately. That was a good way to get yourself shot. 

She didn’t hear any motion from the room, now. She swung around, keeping low, with her gun pointing into the doorway. She could only see an empty hotel room, with a broken window. 

She couldn’t believe that Burke had jumped. It was at least a thirty foot drop to the pavement below the window. She moved forward into the room, first looking left into the open bathroom. It was empty too. 

She kept looking around, as she moved quickly down the short hallway. She still saw no sign of Burke, nor heard anyone moving ahead of her. The whole room became visible when she reached the end of the hall. It was empty. She moved to the window and leaned out, expecting to see Burke’s crumpled body below her. Even if he lived, a jump like that would likely have broken both his legs. All she saw was broken glass scattered across the sidewalk, and out into the street. 

Roach had followed her into the room. They checked the bathroom, and the closet. They even looked under the bed. Burke had gone. 

She looked down the street, toward where their cars were parked, and saw the back of a running man who had to be Burke. He went right past her car, and she swore, because she knew what she was going to see next. Sure enough, right after Burke had passed the cars, she saw Rook sit back up from where he had ducked down out of sight. Then he opened his door, got out, and started to chase after Burke. Rook’s brown overcoat flapped like a cape behind him. 

Heat tore out of the hotel room, down the hall to the stairway, and down the stairs. She heard Roach scrambling after her. She dashed out through the hotel lobby, into the street. She didn’t slow down at all as she passed the cars, running in the direction that Burke and Rook had gone. She couldn’t see them ahead of her, so she kept running, up to the end of the block. She paused there, unsure which way to go. 

She heard a whistle, off to her right, and looked. She saw Rook jumping up and down, and waving at her. At least he hadn’t gotten himself killed, or lost. She ran to catch up with him. 

Rook was standing by a chain link fence, ten feet high, with strands of barbed wire along the top of it. On the other side of the fence were stacks of shipping containers. Nikki knew that they were near the river. 

Rook was panting for breath. “He went over the fence. It hardly slowed him down at all! At first I thought he’d killed himself, when I saw him jump through that window, but he just got up, and ran. Then he went over the fence, and disappeared in between those containers over there.” He waved at the fence. 

Heat looked both ways, up and down the fence. She saw there was a gate, about a block to the north, that actually seemed to have a guard on it. She looked back the way she’d come, and saw the headlights of the Roach Coach coming toward them. Raley and Ochoa had stopped to get their car, and had no doubt already radioed for more backup. “Come on!” she told Rook, and ran toward the gate. She surprised herself a bit by asking him to come along, but she knew he’d just follow anyway. 

Roach caught up with them at the gate, while Heat was showing her badge to the guard, and getting him to let them in. She could hear the sirens of more approaching police cars. She told Roach to take charge of setting up a cordon around the yard to keep Burke from getting away. She didn’t know what he hoped to accomplish by going in there. Maybe he was just panicked, and running, and had managed to get himself trapped. On the other hand, this was a man who had just jumped out a fourth floor window, and scaled a ten foot fence like it wasn’t there. 

Heat ran through the narrow canyon between stacked shipping containers. She reached an intersection and stopped. Rook stumbled to a stop behind her, panting for breath. “Oh god! I need to get more exercise!” 

“Quiet!” hissed Heat. “I’m trying to listen!” 

Rook shut up, and tried to pant more quietly. Heat listened. She could hear the sound of city traffic, and the lapping of water around the pilings of the pier. She could hear sirens, and shouting voices coming from behind her, on the side away from the river. Something clattered across the ground, out near the end of the pier. She hoped she wasn’t falling for the old ‘throw something to make a noise’ distraction trick as she sprinted toward the sound. 

She saw Burke at the end of the pier, about forty feet from her, looking around for a way to escape. The sodium lamps lighting the area gave a yellowish cast to everything they illuminated. She raised her SIG Sauer pistol, in a two handed grip, and trained it on him. “Police! Freeze!” 

Burke turned toward her, and held his hands out to his sides. Heat could see the knife in his hand. “Drop the knife!” she ordered. “Do it now!” 

He laughed. There was something wrong with his face, but Heat couldn’t see it clearly. The lighting made his eyes seem to glow yellow. He bared his teeth at her, and she could see that he’d done something to them. She’d heard that some people, deeply into the goth scene, had dental work done to give themselves fake vampire teeth, but what this man had done went far beyond that. 

He started to walk toward her. “I said freeze! Drop the knife!” 

“Make up your mind!” said Burke, and he charged at her. 

Heat squeezed off three quick shots, right into the centre of his chest, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down. She realized that he must be wearing a bullet proof vest under his jacket, and raised her aim for a head shot, but it was too late. He was already on her. 

He didn’t use his knife. He knocked her gun aside with so much force that it came out of her hands, and spun away across the pier. He punched at her with a hay-maker that showed that he had no training in how to fight, but probably had lots of practice brawling. 

Heat parried the punch, but it felt like she’d just warded off a blow from a heavy club, not a man’s fist. Burke’s momentum still took him past her, off balance, so she hit him with three quick blows: a kick to the side of his knee that should dislocate it, a chop to the wrist of his knife hand, to make him drop it, and a rabbit punch to his kidney, just because it was a good target of opportunity. 

Burke should have gone down onto the ground in agony, but Heat felt that she’d probably done more damage to her foot and hand than she’d done to him. He seemed to barely even notice that he’d been hit as he spun around, and grabbed her by her throat. He lifted her off her feet, and slammed her back against the side of a shipping container. Heat saw stars. 

“Oh, you’re a feisty one! I’m going to enjoy eating you!” Burke smiled, and Heat got a good close look at those teeth. There was no way a dentist had done that to him. The distortions to his face weren’t created by some sort of special effects prosthetic, either, and she didn’t think the yellow eyes came from contacts. She grabbed his hand with both of hers, and tried to pull his fingers away from her throat. It was like trying to bend steel. She knew that if he decided to squeeze, instead of just holding her still, he could snap her neck like a twig. 

She tried to kick him in his family jewels, but the angle was wrong for her to get good contact. It still made him snarl, and his hand tightened around her throat. Heat’s peripheral vision started to cloud, as the flow of blood to her brain was constricted. 

Rook roared with rage, and broke a six foot long piece of 2x4 across the back of Burke’s head. Burke pulled Heat away from the shipping container, and threw her, still using just one hand, at Rook. They both sprawled on the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. 

Burke bent down, and picked up a broken end of the 2x4. “Just for that, I’m gonna make you die slow.” He stepped toward them. “I think I’ll start by breaking pretty boy’s legs, and then he can watch while I fuck you to death.” He raised the 2x4, about to smash it down on Rook’s leg. 

Two guns started firing. Heat looked back and saw Raley and Ochoa coming toward them, their guns raised, and both of them firing over her and Rook. It was a risky thing to do with her and Rook being so close to their target, but under the circumstances, she couldn’t fault their decision to shoot. She pressed herself down, as low to the ground as she could, and looked back at Burke. Heat could see the bullet holes appearing in his jacket, but they didn’t have any more effect on him this time, than when she’d shot him. It just seemed to make him madder. 

Raley and Ochoa came to the same conclusion that Heat had, and she saw their aim had moved upward. She saw holes appear in the shoulders of Burke’s jacket. A bullet scored the side of his face, and then they stopped firing, as both had emptied their magazines. 

Burke laughed. “I’m gonna feast tonight!” 

Something small, and blonde, smashed into Burke from the side, knocking him away from Heat and Rook. “I don’t think so,” said Spring. She attacked Burke with a flurry of kicks and punches that made him reel back. 

The other girl, Bishop, appeared bending over Heat. “Are you okay?” 

Heat managed to nod her head, and croak out “I’m good,” while rubbing at her throat. She could hear Roach running toward them. 

Bishop gave Rook a quick look, and saw him struggling to get back to his feet. She looked toward where Spring was still fighting Burke. 

Heat looked too. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Heat trained in unarmed combat with an ex Navy SEAL. Her instructor, Don, was bigger, and stronger than her, so her training focused on Heat’s quickness, agility, and fighting dirty. Don’s first lesson had been that the Marquess of Queensbury’s rules had no place in a real fight. Heat thought that Don would be impressed, and appalled, by Spring’s fighting style. 

Burke still wasn’t showing anything like fighting skill, but after his initial surprise, he at least seemed to be putting up some sort of defence, using his superior size and mass to keep Spring at arms’ length. Spring was armed with something that might have been a knife. Heat couldn’t see it clearly in the poor light, and dark shadows were still floating in her peripheral vision. Spring looked to be trying for a centre of mass strike with her weapon against Burke, and from what Heat could see, passed up several good opportunities to make debilitating cuts to his arms. 

Bishop ran toward the two fighters. “Hey! Leave some for me!” 

Spring jumped up, and hit Burke with kick to his head that staggered him. Heat was both impressed with the athleticism required to pull something like that off, and unimpressed with the flashiness of it. It was the sort of move that looked good in an action movie, but didn’t belong in a real fight. If Burke had even the least bit of skill, he would have been able to dodge the kick, and for the second that Spring was in the air from her leap, she was vulnerable to any number of attacks from Burke. Fortunately for Spring, Burke was relying entirely on his strength. He had no ability to anticipate what Spring was going to do. He almost always reacted too late to block or parry Spring’s attacks. He never took advantage of any opportunities Spring’s showy style gave him. 

Spring, on the other hand, always seemed to know what Burke was going to do, well before he did it. Heat realized that Spring was completely controlling this fight. She _knew_ she could get away with moves like that kick to Burke’s head, and was putting on a show. 

The kick also gave her half a second to step back from the fight, and let Bishop step in. 

Bishop was amazing too. If anything, she was faster, and she was entirely ruthless in her attacks. Don would approve of her technique. She didn’t have Spring’s extravagant style. She didn’t pass up opportunities to do damage to Burke’s arms and legs when he gave them to her. Heat heard the sound of multiple bones breaking, and Burke’s cries of rage became cries of pain. 

Spring had taken a couple of steps back from the fight, and was now just watching. Heat saw her give an approving nod when Bishop executed a particularly brutal strike to Burke’s elbow that left his arm bent in a completely unnatural way. 

“Stake!” cried out Bishop, and glanced back at Spring just long enough to see her start to throw her weapon. Bishop’s eyes were back on Burke before the weapon had crossed even half the distance between them, and her hand flashed out to catch it without taking another glance. There was no hesitation between the catch, and Bishop’s hand plunging in, past Burke’s useless arm, and into the centre of his chest. 

There was a whooshing noise, and Burke … disolved. He just disappeared. Everything vanished: his clothes, his skin, his muscles. For half a second there seemed to be a bare skeleton standing where he had been, but that disappeared too, into a floating haze of dust that was carried off by the evening breeze. 

The night became quiet. Heat could hear more sirens coming closer. She could hear running feet. She saw Bishop brush dust away from her pants, and heard the clapping sound of her brushing off her hands afterwards. 

“Come on,” Spring said to Bishop, and they came walking toward Heat, Rook and Roach. Raley and Ochoa had just finished loading fresh magazines into their guns, and were holding them, trained down at the ground, but ready to be brought back up at a moment’s notice. Spring looked at Roach, and just shook her head, and smiled. 

She turned her attention back to Heat. “My advice for when the rest of your backup gets here: he must have been wearing a bullet proof vest…” She nodded toward Roach. “…one of those guys’ shots got him in the head, and he fell in the river. Send in some divers to look for him, but the tide’s running out. The body could be miles away by morning.” 

She turned and started to walk away. “And we were never here.” 

Ochoa’s gun came up. “Hold it right there!” 

Spring stopped, and looked back at him. “I just saved your life, Detective, and telling my version of the story will let you keep your career. If you don’t let me and Alex go, it’s the version we’re going to tell. Which version do you think your superiors will believe? If you try telling them what really happened here, how long do you think it will take before you’re forced to take early retirement, for medical reasons?” 

She looked down at Rook, who was still trying to get back on his feet, but having problems with his balance. “And if you try writing about it, you’ll find that you’ll only be getting published in the  Everyone Thinks We’re Wackos Home Journal. You’ll never get your third Pulitzer.” 

“Let them go, Ochoa,” said Heat. 

“But—” 

“She’s right. No one will believe the truth. I was here, and _I_ don’t believe it.” 

Spring smiled again. “This time tomorrow — if you haven’t convinced yourselves that he really _did_ fall in the river, and got washed away — give me a call. I can fill you in on what’s happening. If you try telling the truth, and get fired for it, call me too. I can use people with integrity.” 

Spring and Bishop disappeared between a couple of containers. A few seconds later a pair of uniformed officers came out from between the same two containers, with their guns up in the ready position. Heat wondered for a second how they could have missed seeing the two girls, but then caught a glimpse of two figures silhouetted against the New York skyline on top of the container stack. 

She held up her badge. “Detective Heat, 20th Precinct! Cordon off the area. We’re going to need CSU, and a team of divers in the river, to look for a body.” 


	6. Chapter 6

Nikki Heat slowly erased her whiteboard, packing away the photographs and newspaper clippings into an evidence box. The case was closed, and with their perp dead, there wouldn’t be any trial. She wasn’t happy about the way the case had been closed — whichever version of the story: the truth, or the one that had gone into the official reports. There were still too many unanswered questions. At the top of the list was “where was her head?” Rook was probably right, it was most likely in a landfill. 

She came to the columns on the Tepes Club, and on Spring and Bishop. There was much more to that story than what had gone into their reports. Heat knew that the club was more than just the place where Burke had found Margaret Winston. 

The FBI had finally shown up to take over the case, now that it was over. Nikki had an FBI agent looking over her shoulder right now, watching as she packed up everything. Heat put the last of the photos into the box, taped it shut, and handed it over to her. 

The agent gave her a perfunctory “Thank you,” took the box, and walked away with it. Heat sat back down at her desk to think. 

She’d gone back to the Internet, back to the sites she’d found about girls fighting vampires. They didn’t seem so crazy to her now. Some of them might actually be telling the truth. That was a very scary thought. The idea that there was a hidden world, lurking beneath the surface of the one she lived in. She’d thought that she knew about what might lurk in the darkness: muggers, rapists, thieves and killers; but now it seemed that there was a whole other layer beneath that, full of the monsters from humanity’s worst nightmares. She needed to learn more. She decided to make a phone call. 

* * *

Nikki Heat entered the bar, and looked around. She spotted Spring and Bishop in a corner booth: one that gave them a good view of the entire place. Spring saw her, and raised her glass to her. 

Jameson Rook, Raley and Ochoa followed her across the bar to Spring’s table. Spring waved for them all to sit down, and called a waitress over. “What are you having?” she asked. “It’s on me, tonight.” 

Rook ordered a beer, but Heat, Raley and Ochoa stuck to soft drinks. Spring smiled at them after they had placed their orders. “You’ll probably be wanting something more, later.” 

“I want to keep my head clear, Ms. Spring.” 

“I told you, it’s Kim. I hear they’ve given up searching the river for the body.” 

“When a body goes into the river, it’s either found right away, or no search is going to find it,” said Rales. “Someone might find it if it surfaces again, but we all know that’s not going to happen.” 

“So, no one’s going to be getting a medical discharge?” 

“Yes, and Rook is going to keep getting published in The New Yorker and First Press.” said Heat, “but we all want to hear your story about what really happened.” 

Spring took a sip from her beer. “What do you think happened?” 

Heat knew that Rook was going to be insufferable about this, but she couldn’t come up with any other theory that fit all the evidence. “Burke was a vampire.” 

She looked around at the others, and saw that Roach was reluctantly agreeing with her, while Rook was looking smug. 

“Welcome to the world of the blue pill,” said Spring. 

“Red pill,” said Bishop. “Blue pill lets you stay in the fantasy. Red pill is the real world.” 

“Whatever,” said Spring. “Vampires are real, and they’re not in the least bit sparkly. They are, with very few exceptions, vicious killers.” 

The waitress returned with the drinks order. There was a pause in their conversation while she passed them around. Bishop sucked on the straw in her drink, slurping the last of it from her glass. “Can I have a refill, please?” she asked the waitress. 

“Sure thing. Diet Coke?” asked the waitress. Bishop nodded, and the waitress left the table again. 

“How common are they?” asked Rook. “Why don’t we see more evidence of them?” 

“Not very,” said Spring. “In the US, there are maybe 3,000 vamps, tops. A hundred or so in New York. Some places have more, some less. And you don’t see more evidence for them because, for the most part, they’re careful. They know that they’re outnumbered 100,000 to one, and they take precautions. Any vamp that gets sloppy and starts leaving bodies around with bite marks on it will probably be taken out by other vamps, and then the police do what you guys just did with Burke: they find a story that people will believe, even if it isn’t the truth.” 

“If they aren’t killing, how are they surviving?” 

“I didn’t say they aren’t killing. I just said that most of them are careful about it. Even Burke wasn’t leaving corpses behind that were obvious vampire kills. He cut off the really incriminating evidence, and disposed of it.” 

“Could he survive on just one kill every month or two?” asked Rook. 

“Not really,” said Spring. “There are other victims that he did a better job of disposing of, whose bodies will probably never be found, and he picked victims who wouldn’t really be missed, for the most part. 

“There are other ways a vamp can survive, too. They mostly don’t like doing it, though. A vamp can live off blood from any mammal. Lots of butcher shops sell blood from cows or pigs. Some of the blood from blood banks gets skimmed off. Some of the blood that’s rejected after testing ends up being sold to vamps, instead of being disposed of. Hepatitis, or AIDS won’t hurt a vamp, but they claim it messes up the taste. They prefer blood from healthy people, and without the preservatives that get put into medical blood. There are half a dozen bars in town that will serve you a Bloody Mary, made with real blood, if you know to ask for it. 

“Then there are the places like the Tepes Club.” Spring grimaced. “Though Dwyer is trying out a new wrinkle in that particular scheme.” 

“What happens at the Tepes Club?” 

“There’s a segment of the population that thinks vampires are ‘cool’,” said Spring. “Helped along by some writers of popular books. It’s created a subculture of idiots who _want_ to have a vampire suck their blood, and will actually pay for it to happen. Most won’t try it more than once, but a few people get off on the experience, and keep coming back for more. Then there are the vamps who take homeless people off the streets and use them like the Masai use cattle. Keep them well fed, and watered, even give them accommodations better than your typical prison cell: the blood from a healthy donor tastes better than blood from an unhealthy one. And once a week or so, a vamp chows down on them, just not taking enough blood to kill them…usually. Most of the victims in a scheme like that last a few months before they become so anemic that their blood stops tasting very good, so they’re disposed of.” 

“What’s Dwyer’s wrinkle?” 

“Instead of keeping his cows penned up, he’s recruiting hookers, and paying them to keep coming back,” said Spring. “I doubt if he’ll be able to bring in enough who’ll be willing to open a vein from time to time to really make it work.” 

“And you’re the Slayer who hunts and kills them,” said Heat. “Or do you prefer ‘dusts’. Makes you sound so much less like a serial killer, yourself.” 

“The government had a secret prison where they tried to keep some vamps, and other things, locked up, a few years ago,” said Spring. “It didn’t end well. Forty of the guards were killed.” 

“The government knows about this?” 

“Yep. It’s all Top Secret, Need to Know type stuff, but they know, and they learned their lesson. Why do you think you didn’t see any sign of the FBI until _after_ we staked Burke?” 

“Bureaucratic intertia?” asked Rook. 

“More like Bureaucratic ass covering,” said Bishop. 

“Yeah, vampire cases rarely have a nice neat ending that you can tell the public about, even when you get the perp,” said Spring. “Usually, they have to just let them stay officially unsolved. They’d much rather it be the New York police who get the rap for not catching the guy, even when they know the vamp’s been dusted. You guys got lucky, we dusted the vamp in a place where it was easy to say the body got lost.” 

They continued talking about vampires, and other things that haunted the night. Heat switched over to drinking scotch on the rocks, while Roach joined the beer drinkers. They went through a couple of plates of nachos. 

“What about that girl, Melody, that you chased out of the club?” asked Raley. “Was she a vampire? And is she dust?” 

“Yes, and no,” said Spring. “Melody Kimball, Sunnydale High class of ’99. She made it through to graduation, and became a vampire that day.” 

“Why’s she still alive? Did she get away from you?” 

“No, we caught her. We let her keep un-living in exchange for information on the club. Sometimes you have to let the little fish go, to get a shot at catching the big ones. I’m sure you’ve cut lots of deals with crooks, in order to catch their bosses. And I’m sure that you liked doing it as much as I do, but having a reputation for keeping my word when I say I’ll let something go in exchange for information, makes it a lot easier to get that information.” 

“So, Melody was really from Sunnydale. What about Burke?” asked Heat. 

“Don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Spring. “It wasn’t just the human population that got out of Dodge before the end. Sunnydale used to have the world’s highest concentration of vamps, and other things.” She shrugged and ate some more nachos. “The city government was completely controlled by them. The cops there were either corrupt, or stupid. Most of their efforts went into covering up what was really going on. Made what you guys did with the Burke case look lily white.” 

Roach bristled a bit at that, but Spring waved them down. “No, I mean it. According to the Sunnydale cops, there were gangs on PCP roaming the streets, stabbing people with barbecue forks. They never managed to catch anyone from any of these gangs, but that’s what was going on. And they kept that explanation going for _years_.” 

Spring went on to give more examples of things that had happened in Sunnydale that the police completely covered up, or gave totally ludicrous explanations for. It was nearly midnight when she stood up. 

“Detectives, it’s been a pleasure. I wouldn’t have caught Burke nearly so quickly without your help, but it’s time to call it a night. Alex has classes in the morning, and I believe that most of you have work. If you ever get another case that looks like it might be vampires, give me a call, but until then, I suggest you forget about everything I’ve told you tonight.” 

Spring started to walk away, with Bishop following her. She stopped and looked back. “And I suggest you stay far away from the Tepes Club. Dwyer knows I’m keeping an eye on him, and that if I ever find out anyone died there, I’m shutting him down permanently, and with extreme prejudice.” And then she was gone. 

Heat sat at the table with Rook and Roach, and sipping her scotch, lost in her own thoughts. Even Rook didn’t seem to have anything to say. 

She wished that she could take Spring’s advice, and just forget what she now knew about vampires. She hoped that she would never have cause to talk with Kimberly Spring ever again. 

She doubted if her wish, or her hope would be fulfilled. 


End file.
